


when the gyre widens on

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Nile Freeman-centric, Vignette, Winter Soldier AU, background Andromaquynh, background Kaysanova
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:07:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29625405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: The feeling that hasn’t changed, hasn’t shrunk itself down to a convenient portable size, is flight. It fills up her whole soul.She tilts herself to shear between buildings, one wingtip skimming inches above the fleeing crowd, and she counts down the seconds before she breaks cover. On her two tours she was always in mountain ranges. Busting bunkers, she knows now, was a waste of the Falcon — of something capable of threading this needle’s eye between too-close condos. There’s so much more she could do.If she didn’t have to think about this FUBAR situation, all the smoking cars, betrayal and death around every corner, she’d be having such a good time right now.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 50





	when the gyre widens on

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This fic features blatant disregard for the MCU canon timeline, glossing over anything I don’t feel like going into detail about, and canon-bending to satisfy my id! cw for canon-typical injuries and PTSD. 
> 
> For an absolute stunning look at Falcon!Nile, gaze upon this art by @nicelytousled: https://nicelytousled.tumblr.com/post/643768955318796288/dont-look-at-me-i-do-what-andy-does-just

Nile didn’t ask for any of this, but she’s certainly in it now. 

When she made a new friend running on the Mall, she didn’t expect her to show up on Nile’s doorstep forty-eight hours later all charred and bloodied, with her famous spy pal in tow. 

Maybe she should have expected it. She’s been to the Smithsonian exhibit, and she saw all the footage from the Battle of New York (more times than she cared to, on every network, for weeks). Trouble follows the Captain wherever she goes. 

Now it follows Nile too. 

Getting her wings back, though — that was a nice bonus. She tried not to think about how much she missed them, because part of her was afraid that the moment she put the rig on she’d be right back there, watching Dizzy fall out of the sky. But what she felt was more like a shadow of the sick stomach drop she expected. Without realizing when it happened, she packed it up in a man-purse. 

She’ll have to tell her therapist, if she gets out of all this without jail time, or worse. 

The feeling that hasn’t changed, hasn’t shrunk itself down to a convenient portable size, is flight. It fills up her whole soul. 

She tilts herself to shear between buildings, one wingtip skimming inches above the fleeing crowd, and she counts down the seconds before she breaks cover. On her two tours she was always in mountain ranges. Busting bunkers, she knows now, was a waste of the Falcon — of something capable of threading this needle’s eye between too-close condos. There’s so much more she could do. 

If she didn’t have to think about this FUBAR situation, all the smoking cars, betrayal and death around every corner, she’d be having _such_ a good time right now. 

But Nile is good at focusing. When she reaches the open air she turns, wings arched, legs outstretched in an imitation of what the rig was named for. Her aim hasn’t slipped during her long grounding. Her boots catch this ghost woman, the Winter Soldier, right between the shoulders and send her into a barely controlled roll. 

Nile hits the ground running and huddles behind a taxi, and when she peeks out, another car is exploding. _Again_. 

The smoke clears. The woman is gone. 

The Captain is on her knees in the middle of the street, eyes still fixed on the empty scorched spot, like she doesn’t hear the sirens approaching. Nile reaches her at the same time the spy does. “Let’s go,” he urges, shoving the forgotten shield into Nile’s hands. “We’re not far.” 

The only thing that seems close is an execution at the hands of STRIKE, but Nile helps him get the Captain on her feet and off the street. She walks like she’s in a dream. Nile runs her palm over the Captain’s head, searching for a lump that would indicate concussion, but she doesn’t find anything. 

They weave through back alleys, farther and farther away from the bridge and into an older part of town. Finally Joe leads them down to the basement entrance of a four-story brownstone building. It reminds her of home, back in Chicago. “Is this place secure?” she asks as Joe unlocks the door. 

“He sort of bought the whole building last year,” Joe says. “Nobody here is going to rat us out.” 

“What happened to ‘Everyone we know is trying to kill us?’ You been holding out?” 

“Work-life balance, Nile,” Joe says. 

Nile follows him past the laundry room, silently cursing every cagey spy she’s ever met, which is now a total of two. The Captain grunts when they start up a flight of stairs. Nile realizes she’s been holding one hand tight to a wound in her side this whole time. Shit. Nothing they can do about it in the stairwell, though. 

They reach the top floor, and Joe knocks on the door of apartment H. The man who opens the door doesn’t say anything at first, only surveys them all with a bland expression like this is a regular thing. Joe shifts his weight a little, and the guy leans forward to press their foreheads together. With that done, he nods them inside. 

Nile sets the shield down and lowers the Captain onto the sofa. There’s a longbow mounted on the wall above it. She should have recognized the guy sooner; he was at New York too. So much for work-life balance. 

Hawkeye, whatever his real name is, brings a first aid kit and a roll of gauze. He starts working on the Captain, untroubled by her thousand yard stare. She isn’t bleeding much now — it must have been shallow. 

He acts like he knows what he’s doing, so Nile goes to check out the window because somebody should. No black SUVs, no flashing lights, no armored vans. For now. A little more at ease, she starts taking off the Falcon rig. 

That draws Hawkeye’s attention. “Who is this?” he says. 

“A friend,” Joe answers from the kitchen, and if Nile wasn’t so tired she might feel flattered. “S.H.I.E.L.D. is mostly Hydra, turns out. They sent history’s most terrifyingly effective assassin after us, and they’re on the verge of launching an AI-guided system that will eliminate millions of innocent civilians. You don’t have enough mugs.” 

“Take whatever’s there.” 

Nile accepts the mug of coffee Joe brings her. “Where’s your phone?” he asks. 

She pats her pockets out of reflex before remembering she had it plugged into the CarPlay before their rental got ripped up by a human can opener. “Back on the bridge,” she says. Which sucks, because she really wants to hear her mom’s voice right about now. 

Joe nods. “Good. Mine blew up. Don’t think Cap ever bothered getting one.” 

“So what _do_ we have, apart from weapons?” Nile pokes the non-pointy end of an arrow, and the punching bag it’s stuck in starts to sway. 

“What else do we need?” says Joe, obstinately cheerful. 

More people to point them in the right direction would be swell. “What about other agencies? I’ve got a friend in the CIA.” 

“Copley’s on assignment in Busan. He’d never make it back in time.” Of course he knows Copley. Of course he knows _she_ knows Copley. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve tried Booker,” says their host. He’s finished patching up the Captain and, without a fourth mug, he’s drinking coffee directly from the pot. 

Joe waves this off. “Assume his new PA has him surveilled.” 

Worse, they have to assume everyone associated with S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromised. “Do the Avengers have some kind of god-beacon to get Lykon back from Asgard?” Nile asks. 

The smile Joe and his boyfriend shoot each other is all the _no_ she needs. 

She raises her free hand in a pantomime of surrender. “Sorry, I’m new. What if… what if we go public? One of you must have press contacts.” 

“They’ll kill the story before it ever airs, and us with it,” says Hawkeye. 

Joe gestures at him. “Nicky’s right.” 

“They can’t kill the truth,” Nile says. 

“Truth depends on the circumstance,” Joe tells her.

“No it doesn’t,” Nile bites. 

That surprises a smile out of him, and Joe peers at her like maybe he’s reevaluating. “Truth comes out eventually,” he grants, “but if we overplay our hand it’s gonna be too late for it to save anyone.” 

Hawkeye — Nicky — says, “We can send out all the distress signals we want, but we need to prepare for the probability that it will be just us, and we’re better off laying low until we can do some good.” 

So they’re an army of four, up against S.H.I.E.L.D., STRIKE, the fortress of the Triskelion, and the helicarriers and all of Project Insight’s firepower. Not to mention the Winter Soldier, who landed a hit on the indestructible woman in the process of almost taking three of them out. 

Great odds. 

“When they pulled me out of the ice,” says the Captain, and they all turn toward her, “everything had changed.” 

Her gaze is still far away. She licks her lips. This would be the time for a speech to rally them, but Nile can hear that that’s not what they’ll get. 

When she was in front of cameras, and when Nile met her on the Mall and again at the VA, she spoke with her whole chest and a carefully crafted apple pie accent. Part of the Captain America persona, something from a long-gone era when people believed they knew who the good guys and the bad guys were — something decisive and reassuring and inspiring. 

She lets it slip now, with the fatigue and the wound and the shock. Her voice is quiet and her words are curved at the edges like the corners of her mouth, turning up with a memory, down with a regret. 

“I thought… I thought it was better. That she died when she did. Better that she didn’t have to live through… some of the things I missed. Even if that meant I broke our promise.” She shakes her head. “But it was her. She looked right at me like she didn’t even know me.” 

“How is that possible?” Nicky asks softly, gaze sliding toward Joe. 

“They must have found her. Did things to her — to her mind —”

“None of that is your fault, Quỳnh,” says Joe. 

Quỳnh doesn’t seem convinced. “Even when I had nothing,” she sighs, “I had Andy.” 

Silence settles heavily over them. Nicky breaks it after a while, with effort. “If you get me into the control tower at the Triskelion, I can line up a shot. It will be a lot like Budapest.” 

Joe raises a brow at him. “What time in Budapest?” 

Before they can say anything else about that, Nile says, “I think I’ve got one more mission in me.” 

Quỳnh says, “Good. The helicarriers are your mission.” 

“Oh,” says Joe, “did you finally learn to compartmentalize?” 

Quỳnh only sets her jaw. Nile looks back and forth between them until Quỳnh speaks again. “Let me deal with Andy.” 

Nile gets it, losing a soldier; she’d probably feel the same if she found out Dizzy was somehow still alive. But there’s more riding on this than a tearful reunion, and they can’t afford to be without Quỳnh’s skillset when the noise starts. Treading carefully, she says, “Whoever she used to be… the woman she is now, I don’t think she’s the kind you save. She’s the kind you stop.” 

Nile didn’t get a long look at her, but when the woman righted herself from the roll and her cold pale eyes found Quỳnh again, there was no recognition there. No emotion at all, not even pain or rage. The Winter Soldier saw only a target. Nile takes a breath. “She doesn’t _know_ you.” 

A little of the old fire comes back into Quỳnh’s eyes. There is certainty in her voice once more. “She will.” 

After another long silence, Joe says, “Nicky in the tower, Nile in the air, Cap keeping the Winter Soldier off us, and I’ll make myself useful.” He nods once, firmly. “We see this through to the end.” 

None of them miss it when Quỳnh winces. 

Somebody has to lighten the mood, or at least try. Nile says, “Well, can I shower first?” 

Nile didn’t ask for this, but Captain America needed her help. And now Captain America glances down and smiles slightly, and trouble or not, Nile can see no better reason to get back in.

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to @nevermindirah for invaluable beta work on short notice! 
> 
> The title is from Hozier's "Be" (which in turn got that line from Yeats). 
> 
> I'm @hauntedfalcon on Tumblr if you want to come yell with me about The Old Guard.


End file.
